Logan Cabinet Shoppe

So I'm knocking out the drawer for my shop desk tonight. Simple stuff, right? I mean I've done dozens of these so no problem. I sized all of the drawer parts just a shaving or two over sized to allow for fitting the drawer to the desk later. I scribed all of the baselines, laid out the tail cuts on the sides, gang cut the tails and cleaned out the waste. The tails were looking pretty good and I was pretty happy with myself so I decided to press on even though it was a long day and I was getting pretty tired. I figured if I could just get the pins cut I could glue up the box tonight and it would be ready to fit a bottom tomorrow.

So I transfer all of my tails to their corresponding pin board being careful to pay close attention to orientation of the boards. On to cutting the pins. All was going well (or so I thought) until I got to my last corner of pins. That's when I realized it. I had cut the pins on the previous three corners on the wrong side of the line. Test fitting the sides into the front and back confirmed my unexcusable mistake.

I actually made two mistakes in my overconfidence and haste. The first mistake was a very foolish one made simply by being in a hurry. I did not mark the waste side of the line with big Xs like I usually do. This led to my second mistake, cutting the pins on the wrong side of the line. So I ended up with one nice dovetailed corner and three corners with gaps the size of the Grand Canyon (ok, maybe not that big, but still).

I guess the morals of this story are pretty obvious.

1. ALWAYS  mark the waste, even if you think you don't need to. No matter how many times you've done a particular operation, it only takes one dumb mistake to put your ego right back where it belongs.

2. NEVER work when you're too tired. Even though I'm not going to accidentally cut off an appendage with hand tools (I'd have to be pretty determined), there can still be some pretty serious consequences. I'm lucky I just made a mistake on my project, however, a simple misplaced hand during a paring cut or an improperly secured workpiece can still result in a pretty serious injury, even with hand tools. (As a side note, didn't we just finish Woodworker's Safety Week?)

I don't think I'm going to remake any of the parts of the drawer. Instead, I'll use them and repair the mis-cut joints as best as possible. This will serve as a constant reminder of my mistake and hopefully dissuade me from making it again.

There is one positive that can be gotten from this though. I have my next blog topic all set up for me.....how to fix loose dovetail joints.

Well, after a couple feeler blog posts and a long time toying with the idea, I have finally begun making preparations for a hand tool video podcast. I put together a short trailer video just to test out the video hosting service and you can watch that below. If all goes well, the actual video podcast should be up and running in a short while from now, after I finish my current project, a desk for my shop.

Thanks to every one who posted comments to the two previous blog posts about this or sent emails with your encouragement. Without all of your support I probably wouldn't have bothered to even pursue putting this together. Wish me luck and let's hope this all works out well. Stay tuned!

After years of [ab]use, my trusty saw bench is ready to retire. However, before I can retire the old I must make a new. So that was the project this weekend.

The saw bench is an absolute must have appliance for the hand tool shop. A pair is even better, especially if you process long stock in your shop with hand saws. In addition to supporting stock at a comfortable and convenient height for crosscutting and ripping, the saw bench serves a myriad of other uses in the shop. I use mine to sit on when boring with a brace, as a side table to hold tools and project parts when working at the shave horse, as support for case pieces when I'm planing their dovetails flush, as a bench to sit at when drawing at my workbench, as a step to reach the boards on the top tier of my lumber rack, as a place to sit and take a coffee break and as a second workbench for my kids when they are in the shop "working" with me.

I don't like to over complicate tools and appliances for the shop as I consider them disposable. They get used hard and take a lot of abuse so I don't use expensive lumber or complicated joinery. I want something that will be sturdy and will last but won't cost a lot and will be quick and easy to build. The style of saw bench pictured fits that bill nicely and can be built with cheap lumber and traditional joinery. This makes it very sturdy since it doesn't rely on the strength of mechanical fasteners like nails or screws, but it also stays very lightweight and easy to move around or store out of the way when not needed. It's relatively small at about 30" long by about 12" wide and at about 18" tall (approximately knee height for me) it is the perfect height for processing lumber with hand saws. No shop should be without one of these, or preferably a pair.

Check out the Articles page to see how it was built.

With the built-in finally finished, I had some time to work on a few shop projects I've been wanting to do for awhile. The first was the saw vise that I completed a couple of weeks ago. This weekend's project has been something I have wanted to make for awhile now but continued to put off because there were other ways to accomplish the task this tool does. After the recent sale of my old long steel rulers, I decided the time had come to finally make these.

If you are not familiar with them, they are called pinch sticks, pinch rods, and I'm sure several other names as well. Their sole purpose is to aid in squaring up cases. To use them, you place the pair of sticks inside the assembled box, extend the sticks until the points on the ends nest into the inside corners of the case and lock them down with the captured wedge or thumbscrew. If one diagonal is longer than the other, it will immediately be obvious using this tool. You then simply adjust the case until both diagonals are the same at which point your case is square. Of course you could do this with a long ruler, but with the pinch sticks there is no measuring involved so there is very little room for error. I made several sets in different sizes that will let me use them to square diagonals anywhere from about 8" up to about 60".

Here's a closer picture of the middle set to give you a better view of how they work. The middle block is simply a square block with a through mortise bored and chopped through its center. The mortise is sized to the width of the sticks and their combined thickness. I cut all four blocks from a single piece of wood. I bored and chopped all of the mortises prior to cutting the individual blocks apart to provide an area for holding the stock while cutting the joinery. At the top of the mortise for the sticks on the two smaller pair, an angled wedge mortise is cut and chiseled for the captive wedge that locks the sticks at their setting. I made the blocks from ash and the sticks and wedges from oak. The sticks on the two smaller pair are each about 1/4" thick by about 5/8" wide. The wedges are 1/4" thick.

The sticks on the larger pair are made thicker, about 5/16" thick, so they flex less along their long, 30" length. Since the sticks on the longer pair are thicker, the mortise had to be bigger. Because I cut the blocks from the same small piece of wood as the blocks for the smaller pairs, there was less supporting wood left for a captive wedge mortise to be cut. I was afraid that there would be insufficient material left to support the wedging force without blowing out the end grain on this larger pair so I used brass thumb screws cross grain in place of the captive wedge. The difference is that the blocks end up oriented differently when the sticks are inserted. The wedging forces of the captive wedge need to be in line with the grain for maximum strength. On the other hand, end grain does not tap well so the holes for the thumbscrews needed to be bored and tapped cross grain for maximum strength. I bored and tapped a hole centered on each mortise for a #10-32 brass thumbscrew. To keep the screws from marring the faces of the sticks, short sections of 1/8" oak dowel were put in the holes before putting the screws in. The dowels will then provide the clamping pressure on the sticks, not the screws. This picture was taken before the two blocks for the large pair were cut apart.

This was a long overdue project and I see these tools getting a lot of use in the future.

The doors for the built-in have been done for over a month now. For the last several weeks I've been waiting on the hinges to arrive. I can tell you that this is the last time I will special order anything from the particular outfit that I ordered these hinges from.

At any rate, I thought I would snap some shots of how I cut hinge mortises. For some reason, butt hinge mortises seem to intimidate some people. I'm not sure why as they are super easy to do but maybe it's the thought of cutting a perfect mortise that scares some folks. So here's my method for cutting hinge mortises. Hopefully it will help someone.

I start by laying out the position of the hinge. I take a really simple approach to this. If you look at the picture, you can see how I position my hinges relative to the rails of the door. For the hinges at the top of the door, I align the top of the hinge leaf with the bottom of the top rail. For the bottom hinges, I align the bottom of the hinge leaf with the top of the bottom rail. This usually means that the top and bottom hinges are not the same distance from the top and bottom of the door but I find that the look is better when the hinges are aligned with the rails rather than placed an equal distance from the ends where they may not line up with the rails.

I use the hinge itself to define the length of the hinge mortise with knife lines. I use a try square to extend these knife lines and make sure they are square to the face of the door. I position the hinge on the edge of the door to gauge how far I want the barrel to project past the front of the door and using the hinge as a gauge I make a light mark with my knife to denote the hinge mortise width. I set a marking gauge pin in the knife mark and lock the fence down. I then use this gauge setting to scribe all of the mortises to the same width.

A second gauge is set to the thickness of the hinge leaf and is used to scribe the depth of the hinge mortise on the face of the stile. Care must be taken when scribing the depth not to scribe past the length lines. Since the faces of these doors have already been finish planed, any scribe that goes past the hinge mortise will not be planed away and will show in the finished door. This is not a big deal on the edge since the inside edge of the door will not be seen once it is installed in the cabinet.

I begin the hinge mortise by making short, shallow paring cuts to raise some chips. This is very similar to chopping a joinery mortise, just much shallower. Instead of pounding with a mallet, I hold the blade of the chisel in one hand and I hold the handle of the chisel against my shoulder with the other hand. I push with my upper body weight using my shoulder, not my arms. This offers a lot of control and prevents the chisel from slipping or cutting too far because you are restricting it's movement with your lower hand. I am actually not left handed but the lighting was better taking the picture in this orientation. I usually place my right hand low, my left hand on the handle and push with my right shoulder.

Once you have a series of chips raised from one end of the hinge mortise to the other, begin lightly paring the raised chips away by working across the grain. At this point I do not work to the full length or width of the mortise. Often times, there is very little material remaining at the back of the hinge mortise and trying to make the mortise full width right away will cause you to break out the back of the door. Also, in order to keep the ends of the mortise crisp, I don't remove the waste all the way to the ends of the mortise right away, just like making a joinery mortise. I will square up the ends with final paring cuts with the chisel placed right in the knife lines.

This picture should give you a better idea of what I'm trying to describe. Here's what the hinge mortise looks like after two or three rounds of raising shallow chips and paring cross grain. The interior of the hinge mortise has been pared clean to final depth but I still need to pare the ends back to final length and I also need to pare the back of the mortise back to the marking gauge line to final width.

Once you've made the final paring cuts with the chisel placed in the scribe lines, your hinge mortise is done. Your hinge should fit tightly in the mortise with just a hair to no wiggle room at all. The precision comes from using the hinge itself to lay out the mortise rather than trying to measure with a ruler. Some folks like to level the hinge mortise with a small router plane but I've never foud it necesary. Plus, there is very little material for the plane body to ride on making it very unstable in use.

The built-in doors are done and I ordered the hinges so I've had some free shop time recently. So I've been cleaning up the shop and making a lot of small tools and items for the shop while I wait for the hinges for the built-in doors to be delivered. After putting up some items for sale last week, I was a little surprised that the cast iron saw vise sold as quickly as it did (thanks Dave!). I have had a wooden saw vise on my list of shop projects to build for awhile now. Selling my old iron saw vise caused that project to move up to the top of the priority list so this weekend I cobbled one together.

The entire vise, with the exception of the screw is made from red oak from the B.O.R.G. The top jaw is about 18" wide, twice as wide as the iron vise. This will allow me to file all of my backsaws without constantly repositioning them in the vise. The tops of the jaws stand about 15" above the bench top when clamped in the bench vise. This gets the saw up to a comfortable height for filing while standing up. The vertical member of the front jaw is about 12" long. The vertical member of the rear jaw is about 18" long. This allows the saw to be removed from the saw vise without removing the saw vise from the bench vise (the saw vise is held in the bench vise by the rear jaw only). The vertical member is tenoned and drawbored into the upper jaw with 3/8" oak pegs.

Here you can see how the back vertical is about 6" longer than the front. The front vertical member has a 1-1/2" through hole bored in it and the rear vertical member has a 1-3/8" hole bored and tapped for a 1-1/2" wooden screw. The head of the wooden screw is made from a piece of an old maple hand screw clamp that stripped out. The screw itself is made from a 5" long section of 1-1/2" birch dowel that had threads cut with the 1-1/2" woodthreading kit from Woodcraft. I then added glue to the screw head and screwed the screw into the head. After the glue dried, I drilled a 1/2" through hole through the head and screw for the 1/2" oak dowel handle. After the hole for the handle was bored, I cut the screw head to an octagon shape and filed and sanded it. I bored a 5/8" hole in the bottom of the rear vertical member so the vise can be hung on the wall on a peg when not being used.

With the vise disassembled you can see how the clamping forces work. There is a 1/4" thick piece glued and nailed to the inside bottom of the short vertical member and also to the corresponding location on the long vertical member. I only glued these pieces at the center nail location to allow for wood movement. It's hard to see in these pictures but there is also a 1/4" thick strip glued to the top inside of each jaw. This piece is beveled from top to bottom so that all the clamping pressure is exerted at the very top edge of the jaw. This piece is also planed slightly hollow at the middle so that the outside edges contact the saw plate first and then the compression during tightening of the screw ensures that the saw plate is held securely along its entire length. I finished the entire thing with a coat of Minwax Puritan Pine stain (because I had it from a project from several years ago) to give it a slightly aged look. I may put on some linseed oil tomorrow, however, if I do I will not oil the inside of the top jaw to keep saws from slipping. Mark another one of the round tuit list!

Well, I've been pretty busy the last couple of weeks so I haven't gotten a lot of shop time, hence there hasn't been much to blog about. I have progressed on the second pair of built-in door frames after mucking up the first set and I have the doors almost done so it's time to start thinking about the next projects. Sure, we need a new entertainment center for the family room and I'll be starting on that soon but I have also been thinking about the other project I alluded to late last year. I'm referring to the video project I mentioned in a December 2008 blog. For full details of my rambling thoughts on it see the original blog about it here. I received quite a bit of positive feedback and interest in the video series through both email and comments to the blog post so I do plan to pursue it.

Suffice it to say that I've still been playing around with this concept and I have a project in mind and a general idea of what I'd like to do but I'm still working out the details. For one, I don't have access to a digital video camera. I have a still camera that actually takes pretty good video, which is what initially gave me the idea, but the problem I'm running into is the sound. The microphone on that thing is pretty weak and unless I talk real loud, it's difficult to hear me. Even when I do talk loud enough to be heard, the quality isn't all that great and I'm just not that happy with it so I'm still playing around with some other ideas with regard to the actual filming.

Hopefully I'll be able to figure something out to work out the videos. My fall back plan if I can't get the video concept to work is to do a detailed written project writeup in article form, however this is not my preference. So many hand tool skills and techniques really are best demonstrated and observed rather than printed. There are just some things that are difficult to put into writing and pictures, and even more difficult to comprehend from writing even though they may be very simple concepts. Hopefully I'll come up with a solution that will allow me to do this in video form.

In the mean time, for anyone who will be interested in building along once I get started, I have put together a basic outline of the project concept and a tool list that I'll share now in case you want to get a jump start. Keep in mind that this project is still in the development phase and may change as I go along so you'll have to bear with me. I'll try to keep you posted on my progress here in the blog.

The general idea of the project is that I will be doing a series of short videos, maybe 10-15 minutes or so each in length. The videos will be short in order to keep the file sizes smaller for easier uploading and viewing. My current estimate is that there should be somewhere around 15 short videos. The videos will be geared toward folks new to the craft and those looking to learn hand tool skills so I'm not going to be building a Chippendale highboy. The project will be simple but I'll be doing it with only hand tools.

I want to start with a brief intorduction and shop tour just to give everyone an idea of how I work. Then I'd like to do a couple of videos on the tools for the project, including which ones will be needed for the project, what to look for when buying these tools and how to tune and sharpen them all up. After that we'll actually get into building a piece of furniture using the tools we tuned up in the previous videos. We'll go from basic design and dimensioning through the entire building process right through the finishing step. In the end I think it will be a good start-to-finish series on a lot of basic skills and techniques which can be built upon with future, more challenging projects (which I may or may not do depending on how the first series goes).

So without further ado, I've put together a tool list for anyone looking to join in the project once it gets started. Some of these tools are optional if money is tight but they will make the project a little easier if you have them or can get them. If you have been woodworking for any length of time you probably already have most of them. If you are a beginner, you may need to get several. So here's the list:

-Long Hand Saw filed rip (optional; needed if you will buy wide stock and rip it)
-Backsaw, 12"-14" filed rip (optional but better for cutting tenon cheeks)
-Backsaw, 12"-14" filed cross cut
-Try/Jointer plane, 22"-24"
-Low Angle Block Plane (optional)
-Try Square
-Marking Knife and pencil
-Straight edge or yard stick
-Marking/Mortising Gauge
-One Bench Chisel (anything from 3/4" up to 2" will work)
-One Mortise Chisel (about 3/8" wide)
-Wooden Mallet
-Brace & Bit (optional but recommended; one bit around 1/4"-3/8" is fine)
-Screwdriver
-Liquid Hide Glue
-Sharpening Equipment
     -stones or sandpaper
     -tapered saw file(s), mil file, saw set
     -auger bit file (optional but needed if you get the brace and bit)

I think this is a bare essential tool list for most projects. This list of tools will allow you to complete the project I'm going to be doing as well as plenty of others. If you don't have any tools at all, this is a good place to start that won't require a big initial investment. If you already have a lot of tools, try to limit yourself to this list and see what you learn.

So wish me luck and hopefully we'll be up and running sometime soon. I also hope you'll build along with me and then share what you learn to help out other folks. I think it will be fun!

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you know that I like making and using my own tools. However, up until now, most of the tools I've made were mostly made of wood or at least mostly wood. But for some time, I've wanted to replace a couple of my saws with something better. I was just never really happy with them the way they were. As much as I would like one, my tool budget doesn't allow the purchase of a premium saw. I also didn't want to go majorly modifying my current saws. My dovetail saw was shorter than I wanted anyway so modifying it still wouldn't get me what I wanted. So I did what any good Yankee would do, I made them.

The first challenge was the back of the saw. I had never made one before but I did know what I wanted. I didn't want a milled back, I wanted a folded back. While milled backs are very beautiful and function as good if not better than a traditional folded back, they just aren't very traditional and I like the traditional styled tools.  The problem was that I had no specialized tools for bending metal. I had read the Norse Woodsmith's article on making saws in which he makes a bending brake for folding brass backs but I didn't want to go through so much expense and trouble to find that I really didn't like making saws. I wanted to do this as inexpensively as possible and with as few specialized tools as possible.

The solution came to me one day when I was in Lowes looking for some supplies for some home improvement projects. In one of their hardware isles they have mild steel stock. It comes in flat, round and angle. When I looked at the 14 gauge angle stock, the idea hit me. See, most angle stock I've seen looks like it was extruded from a die and has a thick sharp outside corner. Indeed this is exactly how the 12 gauge stuff was at Lowes. However the 14 gauge stock was bent into a 90 degree angle from a flat piece of steel. They had made the first bend of a folded saw back for me! I picked up some 3/4" angle and some 1" angle. The 3/4" would be for smaller saws like dovetail and carcass saws and the 1" would be for larger back saws like sash and tenon saws.

The next thing I had to figure out was how to finish bending this stuff into a folded saw back. At first I tried to play blacksmith and cold forge it with a 3 lb. hammer on the anvil of my machinist vise. After all, this is likely how saw backs were originally made in the 18th century. It worked eventually and I did build my first saw that way but the process of folding the back was slow and inacurate. I ended up with a lot of bends and twists in the back that I spent a lot of time and effort removing. In the end, removing the bends and twists resulted in a lot of dents and dings in the steel back that just would have taken too long to remove. I had to find a better way to bend the back for my second saw.

The solution came to me after an email exchange with Adam Cherubini. On his web site, he currently sells brass backed saws. However, he mentions that he wants to offer more traditional steel backed saws in the future after he works out a better process for folding the backs. I let him know of my experiences and he mentioned that the tool smiths in Colonial Williamsburg use some sort of press (hydraulic or otherwise, he wasn't sure) to fold backs. When I read this email, the light went on again.

Pictured is the setup I came up with. I had an old metal woodworking face vise that I removed from my bench when I built my wooden twin screw vise. My plan was to use it as a press to close the fold of the pre-bent steel angle. I just clamped the vise upside down to the bench because I didn't want to re-bolt it to the bench but if your vise is already attached to your bench you can of course use it as is.

So I started by cutting a piece of the steel angle to just slightly longer than the length I would need for the back of the saw. Leaving it a little long would allow for some filing to clean it up later. I placed the steel angle in the vise with the open part of the angle right down against the guide bars of the vise. I slowly applied pressure and began closing the bend. After just a little bending, I opened the vise, shifted the piece down and did the same on the part of the steel that extended outside of the vise jaws. I continued this process of bending and shifting the steel back and fourth to make sure I closed the bend evenly. Trying to close one end too much more than the other results in twisting and bending in ways that you don't want a saw back to twist and bend.

After doing this about four or five times, I had the bend about half way closed. I had to move my clamps to keep the vise from shifting under the extreme tourque being applied but after moving the clamps everything seemed to work ok. I removed the piece from the vise often to make sure I was not introducing unwanted bends and twists like I had done with my forging attempt. Everything looked to be going well so I continued onward. I flipped the back over and finished closing the fold with the open end facing the top of the vise (which would actually be the floor in my setup. My vise had a small recess at the bottom that helped to finish closing the fold. Again, I worked slowly to close the fold evenly. Don't want to mess it up now.

Success! The fold closed evenly and the back stayed straight. I ended up with a very nice saw back without all the cussing and fussing of the first one. Another benefit was that the steel was relatively unmarked on the sides. On my first attempt of cold forging a back, I did a lot of damage to the back that I just was not able to remove from the finished back without removing way too much metal. So I left it in. This back came out amazingly smooth and free of blemishes. Bonus!

So I had one nice, straight, practically blemish free saw back. This picture was taken before I did any filing of chamfers or sanding to clean up the back itself. All that was left to do was tap in a piece of spring steel saw plate, fit a handle and some split nuts and file in some teeth. The back was the hard part and now it wasn't so hard anymore! Sweet! I was so thrilled I tried it again with some 1", 14 gauge stock I was planning to use for some larger tenon saws. The process worked equally well for a 16" and a 19" piece of 1" steel angle. Excellent!

So here's the final result. A pair of matching saws. The handles are made from the last of a piece of bubinga that I had. The split nuts are built using the Norse Woodsmith "Poor Boy Split Nuts" method with a minor modification. Since I don't have the ability to silver solder or braze the brass, I used cyanoacrylate glue to attach the bolt head to the threaded brass rod. I also stole an idea from the Grammercy saws kits and used a lock washer under the bolt head to keep it from spinning instead of the traditional square shaft with matching mortise. Much less work and you can't tell the difference until you remove the bolts.

You can see in this picture the difference in the resulting backs from the cold forging and the vise method. The smaller dovetail saw back was cold forged. You can see the dings and dents I couldn't remove. The larger carcass saw back was folded in the vise and is much cleaner.

Both saws have 0.020" thick saw plates. The small dovetail saw has a 9" plate and 17 PPI (16 TPI) filed rip with 5 degrees of rake. I built this saw for dovetailing thin stock like drawers and small boxes. The larger carcass saw has an 11" plate and 15 PPI (14 TPI) filed rip with 5 degrees of rake. I built this one for dovetailing thicker material like 7/8" thick carcass sides and the like. It could also be used for cutting small tenon cheeks, however, I have a pair of rip filed tenon saws in the plans for the future to replace my not so fun to use tenon saw. The best thing about building a saw this way is that I think just about anyone can do it. No special tools required. Mucho fun!

Well I've taken the first step toward learning my new skill for 2009. The lathe is done.  After 2 weekends and a few hours a few nights during the week, I have a very servicable spring pole lathe.

The bulk of the lathe was built from a single 2 x 12 x 16' piece of construction lumber. I was able to find a knot free piece in the 16' length so it was fairly easy to work. The remainder of the parts, the upper lever and the treadle boards were made from a piece of 1 x 6 pine. The poles are two 1-1/4" yellow pine poles meant for closet rods. These are usually found in the molding isle of the big box store. The collar around the two poles to adjust the tension is made from a half of a length of 1/2" copper pipe hammered flat, wrapped around the poles and then riveted together. The dead centers and axle for the upper lever were cut from a piece of 1/2" round mild steel bar. The tool rest is adjustable using a 1/2" carraige bolt. Everything required to build this lathe was purchased from the home center for a total of about $50. I think this lathe will be just the ticket for turning furniture parts and chair legs.

Now I just need to learn to turn!

To begin making the panel, I rough cut a board slightly oversized and plane it to final thickness. In my Cabinet for the Shoppe build I used a full 3/4" thick panel and planed a rabbet all around the back so the panel would sit in the same plane as the door frame. For this panel, I planed the panel thinner so that I would not need to plane a rabbet in the inside. The final thickness of the panel is gauged from the frame and is equal to the thickness from the front of the frame to the back of the groove.

I place the dry assembled frame on top of the board and trace around the inside of the frame to transfer the shape of the panel to the board. I then remove the frame from the board and add the depth of the groove to the outside of the traced lines to arive at the final panel size. Then I cut out the panel to shape.

Next I lay out the panel bevel and field. From my design, I know the exposed portion of the bevel (i.e. the entire beveled portion minus the width of the portion that will be inserted into the groove) is 1/2 M wide. Using my divider I step off 1/2 M all around the panel. The center point of the arch lies on a line even with the shoulders of the field so I find the center along this line and scribe the arch of the field as well.

I also scribe the depth of the bevel around the edges of the panel at this time. Since I do not have a dedicated panel raising and fielding plane, I use a rabbet plane to make raised panels. Since a rabbet plane has no depth stop, I need a gauge mark to tell me when to stop planing. In addition, I won't be able to plane the arched section so I will need this depth gauge to guide my carving. I don't scribe the depth of the field preferring to simply eye this depth as I plane and carve. It's such a shallow cut that a little inconsistency won't be noticed anyway.

Not having a panel raising plane, I begin this raised panel like I begin a square raised panel, by creating a rabbet all around the panel to define the depth of the field. I can plane the rabbet along the bottom and sides of the panel just like I would with a square panel. However, the rabbet at the the top shoulders and arch will need to be carved.

To begin the carving of the rabbet at the top of the panel, I use a wide bench chisel to define the field at the shoulders and a carving gouge to define the field around the arch. Here I'm using a 1/2", #4 gouge. The sweep of this gouge was a good match for the radius of the arch. To keep the scribe continuous all around the arch I always keep a corner of the gouge in the previous cut. I make a vertical stabbing cut all around the arch to the depth of the field.

I then use a very sharp bench chisel held with the bevel down to pare away the waste at the shoulders and around the arch. I pare down until the depth of the field in these areas matches the depth of the field in the areas where I planed the rabbet. Again, I do this by eye.

The last step is to bevel the panel. Again, at the bottom and sides of the panel I can plane the bevel using my rabbet plane. I then use a bench chisel to carve the bevel at the shoulders and arch, working slowly and trying to maintain a straight bevel from the field to the depth of the bevel at the outside of the panel. A little convex is ok and won't be noticed in the final panel but you don't want to carve this area to a concave bevel as it would be very noticeable. I use a chisel as wide or wider than the bevel to aid in keeping a straight line from the field to the outside of the panel bevel.

The last step is to fit the panel to the door frame. Make small adjustments where necessary to make sure the panel fits the frame snug but not tight. You want the panel to be able to expand and contract seasonally without binding but you don't want it to rattle around either. It may be necessary to disassemble the frame completely and fit each frame member to the panel one at a time to make sure you only remove wood where it fits too tight. The you can reassemble the frame and fit the panel to the assembled frame.

This panel turned out pretty good. I'm very happy with it. The bevels are still a little rough and could use some scraping or sanding to clean them up but since this door is just a prototype practice piece, I stopped here. One area that was a little tricky was the junction between the arch and the shoulders when paring the bevel. A straight bench chisel just can't get into these areas very easily. I managed to clean out the waste by using a couple of smaller bench chisels, however, this area is still a little ragged on this door. I'm going to get a double beveled skew chisel before I tackle the real door panels. I think the skew will make it much easier  to clean out these corners.